Politics Plus

This is no surprise, but it is still a relief.  The future of the measure is by no means assured, given several of the reactions on both sides of the aisle.

The Senate voted on Saturday to begin full debate on major health care legislation, propelling President Obama’s top domestic initiative over a crucial, preliminary hurdle in a formidable display of muscle-flexing by the Democratic majority. “Tonight we have the opportunity, the historic opportunity to reform health care once and for all,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and a chief architect of the legislation. “History is knocking on the door. Let’s open it. Let’s begin the debate.”

The 60-to-39 vote, along party lines, clears the way for weeks of rowdy floor proceedings that will begin after Thanksgiving and last through much of December… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

On the left, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is keeping his options open, fearing further dilution of the bill by the GOP.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement on Nov. 21, 2009, after the Senate 60-39 vote to begin debate on a health care reform bill:

"I voted to proceed on health care reform because our current health care system is disintegrating and must be reformed. Forty-six million Americans are uninsured, and 45,000 die every year because they don’t have access to a doctor. We have almost one million Americans going bankrupt because of medically-related diseases, health care costs are soaring and we end up spending almost twice as much per person on health care as any other nation. It is clear that we need real health care reform.

"While I voted to proceed to the health care legislation tonight, I have made it clear to the administration and Democratic leadership that my vote for the final bill is by no means guaranteed… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

The most absurd complaint against the bill was a bold faced lie coming from Traitor Joe LIEberman.

Joe Lieberman is accusing President Obama of executing a bait and switch when it comes to the public option:

"It’s classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can’t find a mention of public option," Lieberman said. "It was added after the election as a part of what we normally consider health insurance reform — insurance market reforms, cover people, cover people who are not covered.

Nice line, Joe, except it’s based on a flat-out lie. President Obama backed the public option during the campaign. For example, the Obama-Biden health care plan proposed a new public plan (emphasis added):

   NEW AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH INSURANCE OPTIONS. The Obama-Biden plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase new affordable health care options if they are uninsured or want new health insurance. Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and meet the same standards for quality and efficiency. …

   The Obama-Biden plan provides new affordable health insurance options by…requiring all large employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees or towards the cost of the public plan.

In May, 2007, the New York Times reported that President Obama had proposed a public option (emphasis added):

   Mr. Obama would create a public plan for individuals who cannot obtain group coverage through their employers or the existing government programs … He would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange, a regulated marketplace of competing private health plans intended to give individuals other, more affordable options for coverage. The public plan would compete in that Insurance Exchange, advisers said.

And here’s a Washington Post candidate profile, President Obama said:

My plan builds on and improves our current insurance system, which most Americans continue to rely upon, and creates a new public health plan for those currently without coverage.

So, Joe, you’re wrong. President Obama has supported a public option from the very beginning… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

LIEberman is full of crap, but he may have come up with a good idea: bait and switch.  Immediately, President Obama and all Senate Democrats should start speaking out against health care reform and promising to vote against it  As the GOP runs amok in their desperate attempts to pass the bill, our people vote for it too.

Speaking of the GOP Regime, McConJob and Hatch were true to form:

…Most hysterical was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who referred to the bill’s accounting — signed off on by a very conservative Congressional Budget Office — as a criminal Ponzi scheme.

“I think Bernie Madoff went to jail for this kind of behavior,” McCain said. Was he suggesting that CBO Douglas Elmendorf should be sent to the slammer? Or Harry Reid.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who, earlier this week, promised a “holy war” over the bill, today embarked on his jihad, which sounded a lot like the talking points advanced at Tea Party rallies by the astroturfing groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

“I hope they’re not trying to take us to socialism,” Hatch said… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Virtually all the Repuglicans whined about how much money this bill will cost, despite the CBO analysis that it will save millions of dollars.

Here are four more GOP quotes you may find interesting.

1.  This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.

2. Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.

3. …we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.

4. We are going on the assumption that this is not socialized medicine. Let me tell you here and now it is socialized medicine.

Don’t these quotes sound all too familiar?  If you don’t remember these exact quotes in yesterday’s debate, there’s a reason for that.  I found them at Democratic Underground.  The first two are by Rep. James W. Wadsworth (R-NY) and Rep. John Taber (R-NY), spoken in 1935, to express GOP opposition to Social Security.  The second two are by Rep. Durward Hall (R-MO) and Rep. James Utt (R-CA), spoken on 4/8/1965 to express GOP opposition to Medicare.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have delayed posting an article on murders perpetrated by Major Hasan at Fort Hood until I could reach an objective conclusion.  While my view is not yet set in stone, it appears that a Radical Cleric may well have taken advantage of Hasan’s psychosis and influenced his actions.

US Army Major Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, intensified contacts with a radical Yemeni American cleric just months before the shootings and began discussing surreptitious financial transfers, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

"Mourners attend the funeral of one of the Fort Hood shooting victims. US Army Major Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people earlier this month at Fort Hood, Texas, intensified his communications with a radical Yemeni American cleric just months before the shootings and began discussing with him surreptitious financial transfers, The Washington Post reported Saturday"

Citing two unnamed sources briefed on a collection of secret e-mails between the two, the newspaper said the e-mails were obtained by an FBI-led task force in San Diego between late last year and June but were not forwarded to the military.

Some were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Washington field office, triggering an assessment into whether they raised national security concerns, but those intercepted later were not, the report said.

Hasan’s contacts with extremist imam Anwar al-Aulaqi began as religious queries but took on a more specific and concrete tone before he moved to Texas, the paper noted.

One source said the two discussed in "cryptic and coded exchanges" the transfer of money overseas in ways that would not attract law enforcement attention, according to The Post.

"He (Hasan) clearly became more radicalized toward the end, and was having discussions related to the transfer of money and finances," the paper quotes on of the sources as saying. "It became very clear toward the end of those e-mails he was interested in taking action."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said Friday that he would investigate the handling of the e-mails and why military officials were not aware of them before the deadly attack… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Assuming that the Post’s sources are reliable, this provides a strong indication that Hasan did commit an act of terrorism.  There is much more we need to learn about this and Levin’s investigation of the FBI handling of emails in their possession long before the crime is a good place to start.  Sadly there is another player in the Senate with far more nefarious motives.

Sen. Joe Lieberman insists on pushing ahead with a Senate inquiry into the mass murder at Ft. Hood, despite White House and Pentagon anxieties that the probe could compromise the prosecution of alleged killer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

It’s always interesting to see how many friends due process has in times of extreme stress. Given what looks like the security authorities’ wretched mishandling of the Hasan case — the guy appears to have done everything but paste an "Osama bin Laden Rocks" bumper sticker on his car — there’s every reason for the administration and the FBI to want to put off a legislative reckoning for as long as possible. "We want to guarantee everyone a fair trial" is always good cover. But in this case, it has the additional virtue of being true.

For Lieberman’s part, the Connecticut independent — funny how that latter noun seems synonymous with "opportunist" in his case — has an unerring instinct for plucking the political moment’s low-hanging fruit. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs told Fox News that he wants to know whether Hasan’s signs of "Islamic extremism" were "missed or ignored."

Those of us who have followed this terrible story can answer "yes" — a conclusion we’ve reached even without the benefit of subpoena power. But these aren’t questions that should be addressed in the politically charged, highly partisan atmosphere of Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates this week ordered an emergency investigation into all aspects of the massacre. Two outsiders — former Army and Veterans Affairs Secretary Togo West and retired Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark — will conduct the probe. Gates charged them with looking into not only the obvious security lapses but also the military’s handling of Hasan’s career in the years leading up to the shootings that left 13 dead and dozens more wounded. West is particularly suited to the task: When media reports several years ago revealed systemic mistreatment of severely wounded veterans of the Iraq War at Walter Reed and other military rehabilitation facilities, it was West, a one-time Clinton administration official, who was recruited to straighten things out.

West and Clark should give particular scrutiny to Hasan’s career as a military psychiatrist. Such an inquiry may not be as rhetorically sexy as those involving terrorism or Islamic extremism, but it is critical to the issue of whether veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are receiving anything close to the sort of treatment they deserve from military health services.

The best reporting being done on this aspect of the Hasan debacle is that of National Public Radio correspondent Daniel Zwerdling. This week, for example, he obtained a 2007 report on Hasan’s fitness by Maj. Scott Moran, then the Army doctor supervising psychiatrists at Walter Reed, where the alleged killer was then working. As NPR summarized the evaluation, Hasan’s superiors believed he was "an incompetent psychiatrist and an unprofessional officer who often neglected his duties and his patients."

Zwerdling quoted from the evaluation: "The faculty has serious concerns about Capt. Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." According to Zwerdling, "the memo shows that Hasan proselytized to patients. He mishandled a homicidal patient. He allowed her to escape from the emergency room. The memo shows that when Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn’t even answer the phone."

According to NPR, Hassan’s colleagues described him as "disconnected from other people," and more than one speculated that he might be psychotic. Several reported his obsessive fixation on Islamic religiosity; one reportedly officially raised the issue of whether that religious fanaticism might trigger an act of betrayal, and another colleague raised the possibility that he might be capable of the sort of fratricide of which he is now accused… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <LA Times>

There is a lot here that needs to be investigated, but we need to wait for Hasan’s criminal prosecution to proceed, before we publicly investigate issues germane to that case.  In addition, the last person who ought to head up such an investigation is Traitor Joe, who can get the most attention and cement his future with the Republican Party by blaming Obama, without considering that the majority of the mistakes were made before he became President.  There will be plenty of blame to go around here, but lets have that assessment done at the proper time by an individual whose integrity supersedes partisan politics.  When it comes to integrity, LIEberman has none,

I  ran across a wonderful article on Elizabeth Warren.  Here’s just a taste.

In Elizabeth Warren’s world, credit card contracts would be so simple a teenager could read and understand them in four minutes. Loans would be as easy to compare as toasters, and online credit scores would be free.

“We need a new model: If you can’t explain it, you can’t sell it,” said Warren, 60, a Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in an interview.

The 1966 high school debate champion of Oklahoma may get what she wants. The House of Representatives will vote in December on her idea. She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Warren won’t discuss whether she may be a candidate to lead the authority, which would have the power to regulate $13.7 trillion of debt products. A Warren nomination would tell banks that Obama is determined to force reduced checking-account fees and limit lender claims in mortgage advertising, among other measures the industry opposes, said Thomas Cooley, dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business.

“She is an ideological crusader,” Cooley said in an interview. “She is a person who will stir up a lot of trouble.” In a column in Forbes magazine, Cooley accused her of “waging a self-righteous holy war.”

The criticism doesn’t bother her, Warren said. She learned to shake things off growing up in Norman, Oklahoma, with three older brothers “in a family of car parts and fist fights,” she said. “It was get tough or die, and I decided to get tough.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Bloomberg>

Warren is my choice for Treasury.  We need a person who will stir up a whole lot of trouble there to replace the Big Finance lackey who currently holds the job.  But barring that, there is nobody more qualified to head the CFPA than Elizabeth Warren.